Tablet shipments decline 7% during the second quarter; Apple iPad still on top

posted by Alan F. / Jul 29, 2015, 11:19 PM

Larger-screened handsets are cannibalizing tablet sales, and unlike smartphones, tablet owners don't feel the need to upgrade to a new slate every other year. These two factors help explain the 7% decline in year-over-year global tablet shipments for the second quarter. According to IDC, 44.7 million tablets were shipped from April through June of this year, compared with the 48 million that were shipped during the same three month period last year.

On top of the list, as it has been ever since the day it was first unveiled by the late Steve Jobs, is the Apple iPad. The tech titan delivered 10.9 million units during the quarter, a 17.9% decline from the 13.3 million units shipped during the 2014 second quarter. Despite the decline, Apple remained on top of the tablet market with a 24.5% market share.

While Apple's global share of the tablet market dropped 3.2 percentage points year-over-year from 2014's 27.7%, Samsung's declined just 1 percentage point from 18% last year to 17% for the second quarter of 2015. Cutting into Apple's lead, Samsung still shipped one million fewer tablets this year, dropping to 7.6 million tablets that were in transit during the quarter. That was a 12% decline from the prior year.

Lenovo's 2.5 million tablets shipped during the three month period was good for third place (and a 5.7% market share) even though the company shipped only 100,000 more tablets in the 2015 second quarter. IDC declared a tie for fourth place between Huawei and LG even though the former's 3.7% market share just topped the 3.6% share owned by LG. While both shipped 1.6 million slates in the period, for LG that represented a whopping 246.4% improvement over the prior year.

Everyone else was thrown into the dreaded "Others" category. Even though this group owned 45.6% of the market, shipments declined 9.3% in the 2015 quarter.

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posted on Jul 29, 2015, 11:25 PM 1

Posts: 515; Member since: Jan 15, 2015

Tablets have become redundant after phablets started becoming popular and people started using phablets as their daily driver. Although I'm using a 5inch phone right now, I'm tempted to upgrade to a phablet next.

posted on Jul 29, 2015, 11:56 PM 0

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posted on Jul 30, 2015, 12:49 AM 0

Posts: 951; Member since: Feb 02, 2012

Apple wanted their idea of a tablet to be a replacement for laptops. Well, they don't replace laptops, and people found this out the hard way. They did, however, inherit the laptop owner mentality of "replace when broken" instead of the smartphone owner mentality of "replace as soon as I can". Tablets haven't come far since 2010, and the primary issues they faced then are still present. Peripheral compatibility is limited because the OS is basically that of a smartphone, battery life is only OK, desktop-grade programs don't run on them, and people still have to use a real computer to get real work done. Why bother with a tablet that's technically a smartphone that can't make calls, when you can use a phablet to get the same job(s) done. Facebook and web browsing on a 10" screen, whoa.

posted on Jul 30, 2015, 3:01 AM 0

They can replace laptops however they need to take the same approach as Asus did with the Transformer series, a good keyboard dock with the right software is all that's required and gives users a choice of how to use the device.
Android is compatible with a lot of devices out of the box.

posted on Jul 30, 2015, 4:58 AM 0

Posts: 601; Member since: Nov 20, 2012

Well I saw ppl substitute using ipads as surveillance camera screen, cash register, menus, powerpoint presentation,etc. I think ipad have enough apps to do some actually work. certainly not complex stuff but it comes in handy.

posted on Jul 30, 2015, 5:03 AM 0

Posts: 1081; Member since: Mar 17, 2015

Desktop programs run on the Surface 3 and all of the Surface Pro tablets. Besides, if Apple put OSX on a tablet such as an "Ipad pro" people would have to figure out how to put Windows on it so that it would actually be useful.